Experiences in Elevated Ability

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You think it would be easy to get a cup of coffee

I was wandering through the mall the other day looking in shops, you know “window shopping” and out of the corner of my eye I saw a gentleman in a wheelchair trying desperately to reach a drink off of a counter. He was in a coffee shop and his drink had been put on the hand off station, but the station was too high. Luckily the clerk noticed and helped him get his drink, and put it in the holder he had on his wheelchair. However this got to me to thinking: Have you ever thought about what it might be like to have your surroundings restrict only you from “normal” life? What about if you were the only one out of 10 people that couldn’t get into your favorite coffee shop, let alone get your own drink off of the counter? This is what human beings with disabilities experience on a daily basis, because the world around them caters to the “majority” instead of everyone. Given that over the past twenty years many parts of the world have made accessibility a matter of basic human rights, I can’t even imagine what that gentleman’s experience would have been twenty years ago. Would he have even been able to get into the mall?